The Company

Craftsman is a brand of hand and power tools and lawn and garden equipment sold from within large retail chains, small hardware stores, and specialty military and racing stores.

The Challenge

Craftsman brought the Mt. Merchant team in with a general call to action: Help us increase revenue and profit lift.

Mt. Merchant clients come in all varieties, with very specific projects (email marketing or carousel enhancements, for example) or with general overarching business needs (increased sales and profits) in mind. In Craftman’s case, Mt. Merchant was given creative license to implement whatever methods we recommended for boosted revenue and profit.

The Solution

Mt. Merchant implemented a suite of solutions, but one we’d like to point out for this client is the “Frequently Bought Together Check Out” solution, or FBT Check Out, for short. For a minute, imagine the checkout experience at a brick-and-mortar store. You stand in an aisle, surrounded by candy, lip balms, mints, batteries, and other last-minute purchase items. You read a magazine, maybe stare down a candy bar and weigh the waistline-to-satisfaction ratio you could have if you dropped that chocolatey salvation in your cart.

Online, that experience doesn’t exist for most e-commerce sites. We can create it, though. We brought those last-minute checkout-lane purchases to the online checkout experience for Craftsman. Whether it be the usual suspects — batteries to go with a flashlight — or larger items, such as a premium saw blade to go with a miter saw, Mt. Merchant FBT Check Out recommendations are on point.

The Results

This Craftsman campaign shows us that even small, last-minute purchases can make an impact on revenue, and that when we work with high margin items, even greater returns are possible.

Joe Cashman is a serial entrepreneur and has been a data integration professional for more than 25 years. As co-founder and CEO of Mt. Merchant, as well as Commerce Objects, Inc., Joe has helped retailers and brands, including Sears, Kmart, Kenmore, Craftsman, and La-Z-Boy, increase revenue and profit lift through the creation and integration of personalized recommendation systems. Prior to founding Mt. Merchant and Commerce Objects, Inc., Joe was the CEO and founder of Community Season, which he grew and sold to investors. Joe’s early career was spent at Best Buy and Northgate Computers, and he was one of the first employees at SPS Commerce, where he grew revenue from $500,000 to $10 million annually as Director of Sales/Marketing. An alum of St. John’s University, Joe lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and enjoys running, golfing, and playing the drums.